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Fig Pickles

Pickled figs made by boiling vinegar, sugar, spices, and figs for two hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Fig and peach share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 45 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Fig Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a kettle, combine vinegar, sugar, and spices.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

Cook the figs

  1. Add the figs and cook slowly for 2 hours.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Fig + peachtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together45 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Sugar + figtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Vinegar + peachtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together348 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Vinegar + figtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together243 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Figs
The main fruit, which softens during slow cooking and absorbs the spiced syrup.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, with the vinegar, helps preserve the fruit and thicken the syrup.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the figs.

The step that matters

Cooking the figs slowly for 2 hours. Sugar can scorch on the bottom of the kettle at high heat, and figs can break down into mush if cooked too hard. A slow simmer lets the syrup penetrate the fruit gradually, keeping the figs intact and evenly flavored.

Swap the peach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, sugar, fig):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Pearfits about as well
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, fig. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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